The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The Darwinian revolution is about essence. The Darwinian revolution is about who we are, it's what we're made of, it's what our… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science can't tell us what our life means ethically. It can't tell us what we are meant to do as moral creatures.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We live in a profoundly nonintellectual culture, made all the worse by a passive hedonism abetted by the spread of wealth and… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
What's important is that all human knowledge be made available to all intelligent people who want to learn it. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We can now determine, easily and relatively cheaply, the detailed chemical architecture of genes ; and we can trace the products of… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Sure we fit. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. But the world wasn't made for us and it will endure without… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
History employs evolution to structure biological events in time. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory ... — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower"… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably)… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I believe that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
